...the KJV, the Anglican Book Of Common Prayer...Milton, Bunyan, Shakespeare...
Now, with the possible exception of Shskespeare, I don't think the rest of those sources have ever been even an occasional feature of homilies by Roman Catholic or Orthodox clerics.
So are we to assume that the Catholics and the Orthodox are doing it all wrong? Or does their oratory get grandfathered in by virtue of its being traditional on it's own terms?
And if the latter, why can't "Whoa dude, like, re-build the temple in three days", become a tradition unto itself?
I heard a Methodist minister and historian speak at a conference a year or so back.
He recalled how when he started out 'on the circuit' as a young man in the late 50s/early 60s Yorkshire Dales the old fellas who led the prayers would do so with allusions and language drawn from the KJV, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (they all had copies at home), Milton, Bunyan, Shakespeare ...
Yeah but this was the product of very particular historical circumstances; namely an era of universal education following a period where access to education both secular and religious had been heavily controlled/gate-kept.
Why did they all have those books at home? Because they were often the first people in their family to get access to decent education and hungry to read. Why did they all have those books at home? Because they were the only ones available and it was hard to get hold of anything else.
Even if this period wasn't followed by an explosion of non-literary media, it was unlikely to persist. It is hard to see how it could be replicated, and if you think through the implications of doing so probably not very desirable.
In the European context, ignorance of bible stories is diminishing because it reduces the reader's ability to understand the background. It is impossible to be aware of what one doesn't know, so the lack of perceived loss is irrelevant.
The same is true of the absence of cultural education when languages are taught. It leaves people not understanding a huge part of what native speakers are drawing on when they speak. The awareness of the listener is simply not relevant.
I heard a Methodist minister and historian speak at a conference a year or so back.
He recalled how when he started out 'on the circuit' as a young man in the late 50s/early 60s Yorkshire Dales the old fellas who led the prayers would do so with allusions and language drawn from the KJV, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (they all had copies at home), Milton, Bunyan, Shakespeare ...
Now what do we get?
'Lord, we really just ...'
And, 'I was like no way and he was like wow!'
Rubbish in. Rubbish out.
The problem with that observation, at least in my experience, is that I’m most likely to hear a “Wejus” prayer—“Lord, we just thank you and we just praise you . . . .”—from someone who is very familiar with the Bible, and quite possibly the KJV.
It also seems to me that this is about something other than what was described in the OP, which was:
How can we, whatever our theology or affiliation, frame biblical references and ideas in a way that connects with people who have largely lost familiarity with these stories and concepts?
I run a poetry group and am often struck how unaware people in their 60s and 70s are of basic biblical or theological allusions. It would be even more the case with younger folk.
The example from the Methodist circuit rider doesn’t really seem to be about unfamiliarity with “basic biblical or theological allusions.” Rather, it seems to be about declining influence of the language of Shakespeare, Cranmer or the KJV on how English is spoken by contemporary English speakers.
And yes @chrisstiles I fully accept the particular cultural and sociological circumstances.
@stetson, I'm Orthodox so I'm hardly likely to argue that the RCs and ourselves have 'got it wrong' by not having lengthy extemporary prayers featuring chunks of the KJV, Milton, Buryan, Shakespeare or the Book of Common Prayer.
I was simply citing an example where the Bible and broader cultural references informed by the scriptures could feature in such prayers.
Heck, if I was going to listen to extemporary prayer I'd rather it had all those things in it than 'Lord we really just ...'
But really and truly, it's not up to me to assess the sincerity or efficacy of other people's prayers. I've got all along saying my own.
@Nick Tamen- I think you are all taking me rather too literally here. I'm not saying that KJV folks aren't going to pray 'Lord we just wanna' prayers any more or less than NIV readers.
Besides, the 'just shall live by faith.'
@KoF - but Sikhs aren't Christians. They are Sikhs. If they were out to convert other people then I'm sure they would be concerned for them to absorb some kind of understanding of the Sikh scriptures even though they wouldn't approach thar in the same way as Christians might.
I'm riffing with these ideas folks and flipping ideas around to see where they land. Don't go all literal on me.
Thinking about it, and more seriously, in my experience people who use the KJV tend to pray in an approximation of that.
This was certainly the case among the Pentecostals in my native South Wales.
They would also 'prophesy' in language that approximated to the Authorised Version.
'Yea, verily, I say unto thee my son, my daughter, your God hath seen the thoughts and intentions of your heart ...'
And so on and so forth.
I never found any of it convincing. Neither the prophecies nor the tongues.
It may well say more about me than it does about them but it was only when I saw and heard middle-class and educated Anglicans doing it that I took the charismatic thing sufficiently seriously to be drawn that way myself. The restorationist 'house-church' or 'new church' people also prayed and prophesied in ways that sounded more contemporary and less stilted.
Looking back, of course, the content wasn't generally that different but the way it was framed and presented was.
But I digress ...
Although I would contend that this isn't a complete tangent to the OP.
@KoF - but Sikhs aren't Christians. They are Sikhs. If they were out to convert other people then I'm sure they would be concerned for them to absorb some kind of understanding of the Sikh scriptures even though they wouldn't approach thar in the same way as Christians might.
I'm riffing with these ideas folks and flipping ideas around to see where they land. Don't go all literal on me.
Ok then I'm misunderstanding your thread because you seemed to be complaining about the lack of knowledge of bible stories in society rather than inside your religion.
The example from the Methodist circuit rider doesn’t really seem to be about unfamiliarity with “basic biblical or theological allusions.” Rather, it seems to be about declining influence of the language of Shakespeare, Cranmer or the KJV on how English is spoken by contemporary English speakers.
A related thing, maybe, but not the same thing.
No, I don't think it's about the language at all - it's about the cultural references. Can you reference "classic literature" - that standard corpus of writing that you can expect an average person to have at least a passing familiarity with - and have it understood by your listener?
It seems to me that these days, "the classics" are much less present. Go and accost random 20-somethings on the high street, and find out how many of them are familiar with the collection of fables attributed to Aesop, or nursery rhymes, or indeed Bible stories.
This is, of course, an opportunity for people to bemoan the state of modern education, but I think once again that education has become different, and not worse.
Threads like this have a kind of "kids these days" grumpiness to them, nostalgic for a mythical golden age when Biblical fluency wasn't just a trait of a small, educated elite. That age either never existed or was a very brief blip. Prior to moveable type printing, the typical Christian was illiterate, spent six days a week working, and received oral religious instruction for a few hours on Sunday. There was a widespread familiarity with certain Christian tropes, but also a lot of folk Christianity (e.g. mediæval mystery plays, etc.). That's one of the things that often gets left out of discussions like this, not just the scriptural things that are not widely known but the non-scriptural things that are widely assumed to be scriptural.
I suppose you could have a window for widespread familiarity with Biblical tropes in the Anglophone world ranging from 1611 (when the Bible was first widely published in English) to whatever date one wants to arbitrarily draw as the decline of civilization. I'm still not convinced that your average Victorian factory worker would, after an exhausting fourteen hour shift at the factory, set aside some time to read the Bible rather than a Penny Dreadful.
To touch briefly on the subject of kings, I think @Doc Tor is buying into the propaganda of how monarchy should work (at least according to the monarchs) rather than how it actually did work. For example, the monarchs most familiar to the early Christians would have been the Herodians. In other words Roman puppets installed (and sometimes removed) by the Romans. Also, there were numerous revolts against the various Herodians, indicating that they weren't regarded as all-powerful dictators by those they ruled over. The same could be said of the Roman emperors. How many of the early emperors died natural deaths? Only Vespasian and Nerva come to mind as first century examples. (Maybe Titus if you consider disease to be a death by natural causes.)
It gets even dicier if we look at mediæval monarchs. The whole basis of the feudal system was that the king lacked what we today would call "state capacity" to directly administer the kingdom himself and had to rely on semi-autonomous vassals. While there was a lot of contemporary propaganda about the power of the monarch, we don't really get the idea of king-as-unquestioned-dictator until the early modern era at the earliest. That's pretty far down the line, temporally speaking, from both the writing of the Bible and the establishment of the idea of monarchy.
How can we say "Jesus is Lord" without that basic understanding of lordship which that implies, without having the experience of living with Caesar as lord and the radical statement that Jesus has greater authority over our lives?
It seems like taking the Gospel message as "Jesus is like Cæsar, only more so" might be exactly the wrong message to learn.
The example from the Methodist circuit rider doesn’t really seem to be about unfamiliarity with “basic biblical or theological allusions.” Rather, it seems to be about declining influence of the language of Shakespeare, Cranmer or the KJV on how English is spoken by contemporary English speakers.
A related thing, maybe, but not the same thing.
No, I don't think it's about the language at all - it's about the cultural references. Can you reference "classic literature" - that standard corpus of writing that you can expect an average person to have at least a passing familiarity with - and have it understood by your listener?
I think that’s the case when we’re talking about the listener not understanding a reference to, say, the patience of Job.
But if we’re talking about someone praying in a style along the lines of “Lord, we really just . . . ,” instead of “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secretes are hid: . . . ,” I think we’re talking more about language as used. That someone prays in the style of the former rather than the latter tells us nothing about whether they having a passing familiarity with the language of Cranmer. They might be very familiar with, it for whatever reason, choose not to emulate it.
That age either never existed or was a very brief blip. Prior to moveable type printing, the typical Christian was illiterate, spent six days a week working, and received oral religious instruction for a few hours on Sunday. There was a widespread familiarity with certain Christian tropes, but also a lot of folk Christianity (e.g. mediæval mystery plays, etc.). That's one of the things that often gets left out of discussions like this, not just the scriptural things that are not widely known but the non-scriptural things that are widely assumed to be scriptural.
I suppose you could have a window for widespread familiarity with Biblical tropes in the Anglophone world ranging from 1611 (when the Bible was first widely published in English) to whatever date one wants to arbitrarily draw as the decline of civilization.
Completely agree, and this much more complete expression of what I was trying to get at above. The halcyon age being referred to lasted two generations at the very most (I recall Orwell writing about his conversations with market traders in London who didn't know what happened inside St Paul's), and covered a window where mass education had taken off, but before mass media had made its mark.
My question to @Gamma Gamaliel in the the context of the OP would be 'What does good look like? And how would you see us getting there?'
I'm not sure I have an answer but will attempt one after making the following observations.
1) No, I don't believe there was ever a 'golden age' or a time as Tyndale yearned for when the simplest plough boy knew more of the scriptures than venal cardinals and clerics.
2) It's a great story the one about the chap who visited Byzantium to find ostlers and barbers or the bloke who filled the bath arguing the finer points of 'hypostases' - 'homousios' or whatever it was - and I can't remember the reference off the top of my head. Great story. Probably an urban myth.
3) I am aware of the danger of toppling over into, 'The youth today ...' territory.
4) I still think some of you are taking my Methodist local preacher example far too literally.
5) I suspect that Sikh and Muslim clerics are concerned about levels of scriptural literacy within their own communities when it comes to their own sacred texts.
6) No, I don't think of the UK or any other Western country - or any other country come to that - as a 'Christian country' - but our societies have been informed and shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition and if we look at things from a missiological perspective then that should 'assist' evangelism or the process of evangelisation. If we think such a process is desirable that is.
As to what 'good' would look like, I think a higher level of catechesis across the board - in all churches ' would be a good thing.
There's an old lady in my brother's Anglican parish who thinks that John the Baptist wrote the New Testament.
As far as engaging with wider society goes, then yes, we should try to present things in ways that people understand and not brow-beat them with proof-texts or expect them to know how many tassles their were on the tackle in The Tabernacle.
More importantly, I think the onus is on us - if we are Christians - to think and act 'biblically' - in a 'Beatitude' sense. Our deeds and words should match. Talk is cheap. And I'm the worst offender.
@Lamb Chopped touched on this on the Christian Nationalism thread. The long, slow, tough process of 'presence' - of drawing alongside people and showing 'a more excellent way.'
I signally fail at that.
Until I start to improve at that then I don't have any answers.
But 'good' would be us having a reasonable grasp of the Gospel ourselves and be living it out and applying it in whatever sphere we find ourselves.
4) I still think some of you are taking my Methodist local preacher example far too literally.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say some of us are taking that example too literally. You offered it as an example, right after saying “we’re losing so much context.” Some of us are just trying to figure how well, if at all, it actually is an example of the issue you posed in your OP. If you think we’re misunderstanding what you intended by offering it as an example, you can always clarify how you think it relates.
I’m afraid I think that @Crœsos, @chrisstiles and others are right—I’m not sure but what the “problem” raised in this thread is grounded more in imagination and nostalgia than in historical reality.
I'd accept that I'm riffing with imagination and nostalgia, rather than 'suffering' from them as it were.
I will get back to you with an attempt at a more coherent answer.
I've tended to post in a stream of consciousness kind of way on this thread and set more hares running than I'd intended.
The central problem posed by the OP is an acute one, I believe.
How do we do 'God-talk' in a post-Christendom, post-Christian context. Which is where we all are or are headed.
The Methodist preacher anecdote was a bit of a red-herring and perhaps I should have discussed it elsewhere.
I think there's more to this issue than Gamaliel has gone from Angry Young Man to Grumpy Old Git and hankers after a romanticised past which never existed in the first place.
I may well be a Grumpy Old Git but let's put that to one side.
I'll try and get the OP back on track tomorrow. Not for the first time I've allowed my loquacity to derail my own thread.
6) No, I don't think of the UK or any other Western country - or any other country come to that - as a 'Christian country' - but our societies have been informed and shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition and if we look at things from a missiological perspective then that should 'assist' evangelism or the process of evangelisation. If we think such a process is desirable that is.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? And yet, in my personal experience, people are much more receptive to the Gospel when they haven't been "immunized" against it by a minor passing acquaintance with a handful of points about Christianity (usually part wrong) and the belief that not owing allegiance to some other religion (Islam?) automatically makes them Christian.
Give me more straightforward pagans, say I. Or anything but the nominal Christians. Because they know not what they are missing, and they damn well don't want you to tell them...
Sure, I can see that @Lamb Chopped but generally speaking, if you look at religious 'revivals' and 'awakenings' - and the term 'revival' is used somewhat differently this side of the Atlantic of course - they have tended to take place in conditions where there is a residual or widespread knowledge of Christianity.
Yes, there have been 'people-movements' among tribal groups, such as in Myanmar and elsewhere. But by and large revivalist movements such as Methodism or the 1859-60 revivals across North America and the UK and the Welsh Revival of 1904-05 all took place in societies with a background knowledge and strong Christian influence.
Indeed, it's often noted that the impact here in the UK of the Billy Graham crusades of the 1950s was higher than that of the 1960s and 1980s. Why? Because there was a stronger residual awareness of the Christian narrative and congregational hymn-singing etc.
Ok, I'm no longer a 'revivalist' and believe there's a lot of wistful wishful thinking about the 'awakenings' and 'revivals' of the past.
I'd also accept that familiarity can breed contempt and that a passing nod to the Gospel and widespread nominalism can and does inoculate people against deeper engagement with the Christian faith.
Granted.
There are issues all ways round.
At the risk of yet more tangents, my own adopted Orthodox tradition here in the UK has a hinterland of largely nominal 'cultural Christians' from Eastern Europe and the Balkans with a few keenies and converts who keep things going.
Most converts come from other Christian backgrounds but I have heard of a number of previously unchurched people who find their way in - either through an interest in iconography or, it seems, the writings and You Tube videos of popular (unfortunately) right-wing philosophers and pundits with Orthodox credentials.
Let the reader understand.
I'm not the only one who worries if people say they want to convert over Dead Horse issues or because they imagine we'll be more conservative than where they've been.
Any road up, as they say in Yorkshire, if we are to reach out to and engage with people who aren't well-versed in biblical concepts, language or narrative how do we present those in a way they can understand?
Forget my Methodist preacher example for a moment. Or my sounding like a Grumpy Old Git wistful for a lost golden-age that never was.
Is the lack of biblical literacy an opportunity? We can present things afresh without baggage as it were.
In the words of a close street friend when offered the good news story that his sins needed forgiving, and all he had to do was accept Jesus' sacrifice for them, 'Fuck off!'.
In the words of a close street friend when offered the good news story that his sins needed forgiving, and all he had to do was accept Jesus' sacrifice for them, 'Fuck off!'.
Who is this in reply to? And how is does it relate to their comment?
It's to the OP and the conceit that the Bible has any stories worth telling, including gospel (what is that again?) ones, let alone 'modeling', to a Western audience blithely ignorant of them.
It's to the OP and the conceit that the Bible has any stories worth telling, including gospel (what is that again?) ones, let alone 'modeling', to a Western audience blithely ignorant of them.
Well, if I've understood the topic and subsequent discussion, it's "What kind of stories are useful for conveying the ideas in the Bible?", not "Is the Bible true?"
Any road up, as they say in Yorkshire, if we are to reach out to and engage with people who aren't well-versed in biblical concepts, language or narrative how do we present those in a way they can understand?
Is the lack of biblical literacy an opportunity? We can present things afresh without baggage as it were. Or is it an impediment?
In the words of a close street friend when offered the good news story that his sins needed forgiving, and all he had to do was accept Jesus' sacrifice for them, 'Fuck off!'.
Don't try to reach people who don't want to be reached.
And don't get hung up on your familiarity with biblical concepts, language and narrative - just because a particular representation matters to you doesn't mean it should matter to anyone else.
If you want to reach people, you don't start from what you know and are familiar with, you start from where they are. Work out what the problem is to which you're providing a solution, or the question to which you're providing an answer. What aspect of their lived experience is going to be improved by listening to what you have to say?
But you don't have to dismiss the bible stories. Just because people don't recognise the Parable of the Prodigal Son in the same way you do, doesn't mean they won't recognise the archetype. It crops up all over the place in modern culture - music, film, TV. A wayward child's return home, the anticipated reconciliation with the parental home-maker, the reaction of those that never left. And that's without exploring the realm of interpretations - the dreamt-of acceptance of those blamed for being rejected, the embracing nature of fatherhood.
Looking at it from another perspective, what relevance could a story of someone starving and not having enough to eat possibly have today?
As to what 'good' would look like, I think a higher level of catechesis across the board - in all churches ' would be a good thing.
There's an old lady in my brother's Anglican parish who thinks that John the Baptist wrote the New Testament.
Then you have a bigger problem on your hands, because catechesis isn't really something the Anglicans have ever done - middle brow suspicion of actually putting effort into knowing anything is somewhat traditional.
I've spent time in churches which had adult Sunday School prior/post the service so I can see the value of such things. Equally churches like that were once dominant in some places and are no longer, so obviously they have their own issues with transmitting the faith and/or propagating themselves across the ages.
It's to the OP and the conceit that the Bible has any stories worth telling, including gospel (what is that again?) ones, let alone 'modeling', to a Western audience blithely ignorant of them.
Well, again, the bible is a collection of stories, many of which have proved influential in the literary and intellectual climate of the West in the past, oh say, 2000 years.
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
And even if one DOES think the bible is utterly without value for contemporary readers, I personally think that's a topic for its own thread, not something to just randomly announce on a thread specifically about biblical metaphors.
But enough from me. I'm going to notify the mods about @Martin54's intervention, and they can respond however they want.
Regardless of whether there was ever a golden age where everyone knew al these stories, would it be a good thing from a secular standpoint for people to have a passing familiarity with classical mythology, Biblical stories, Shakespeare, some of the stories from the Journey to the West, the Ramayana, and so on?
The Daflings' school has taught them all bits of Norse mythology, which is an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.
You'd want to add some writing by and about women though, which is tricky because feminist writing is generally in the Schillerian sense sentimental rather than naive.
(Naive and sentimental was a contrast between different poets made by Schiller: naive poets, which included Homer and Shakespeare, write what seems to them interesting without second guessing themselves, while sentimental writers, which for Schiller included most post-medieval poets, write with a meta-awareness and reflecting upon their own emotional reactions to the material.
In this context, naive writing is more open-ended in the uses and interpretations that can be made of it, because the author isn't trying to constrain what other people do with it.)
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Besides all of the people who do read the books on those lists
But to the OP, it would seem to me that getting people to read biblical stories requires reminding people of the value these stories have had, and continue to have. I don't think that there's any missional value, really, in having people read the bible. More likely the opposite is to occur, that the stories and ideas conveyed would be too alienating and strange to contemporary people and so would push them away. But those stories are part of our common intellectual heritage now, so I'd think there's value in them that way.
Getting the bible into other cultures? Well I don't know. Again, it seems to me like if the goal is conversion or whatever, then you wouldn't start off with the bible.
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Besides all of the people who do read the books on those lists
Reading Almaghest, Leviathan, Capital and the AV is a minority sport and you can't build a culture around it.
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Besides all of the people who do read the books on those lists
Reading Almaghest, Leviathan, Capital and the AV is a minority sport and you can't build a culture around it.
Given that there are already are cultures built around reading those texts and others like them, I presume you mean you can't build a mass culture around the reading of those texts. Well sure. You can't engineer mass culture in general. Christianity isn't a mass culture anymore, we're all post-Christendom baby.
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Besides all of the people who do read the books on those lists
Reading Almaghest, Leviathan, Capital and the AV is a minority sport and you can't build a culture around it.
Given that there are already are cultures built around reading those texts and others like them, I presume you mean you can't build a mass culture around the reading of those texts. Well sure. You can't engineer mass culture in general. Christianity isn't a mass culture anymore, we're all post-Christendom baby.
Yeah quite, which is why there is no remedy for the questions in the OP.
Which is one of the reasons why I'm asking them. 😉
@stetson - inform the Admins if you must. I wasn't offended by @Martin54's outburst. It was probably no more than I deserved (although I do think he missed the point).
But that's for Hosts and Admins not for shadow-hosting from anyone else, myself included.
Meanwhile, I agree with much of what @pease and @chrisstiles have written and don't want to give the impression that I'd only be happy if everyone went around citing chapter and verse and recognising every single biblical reference.
Heck, I'm Orthodox. A lot of our folks never open the Bible at all.
I'm simply thinking aloud about the issues - good, bad and indifferent - we face in a post-Christendom / post-Christian society.
Why would anyone need to convey the ideas of the bible to the masses? Apart from the one everybody knows.
I have an academic interest in Women's History. I'm part of a group which puts a lot of effort into public engagement. We've dressed up in costumes, we've run workshops, we've lead Heritage Walks, we've published booklets, we've given talks, we have a website, we have social media.
Why do we feel we need to convey our ideas to the masses? Because we find it interesting and think that if other people hear about it / read about it, they'll find it interesting too. Because I think the under-representation of women in school curricula and in history books matters and I want to do something about it.
Going back to the OP, I think it's instructive to note how, within the Bible itself, the "story" had to be reframed to make it comprehensible to non-Jewish culture. The crucial passage is Paul speaking to Greeks on the Areopagus, where it would be pointless to present Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy. Instead, he (perhaps desperately) looks around for a relevant cultural image and seizes upon the inscription to "the Unknown God". As far as I can remember, he makes no reference to the Bible whatsoever. His approach, one has to say, meets with very limited success; conversely Paul and Barnabas, coming earlier to Derbe and inexperienced in Gentile evangelism, have to shake off the crowd who think they are incarnations of Greek gods.
Even in church I feel that my task as preacher is to explain a Bible passage's meaning within its original context, then seek to reconstruct that in a vastly different culture. "The plain meaning of Scripture" can be very misleading if we don't do that!
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Besides all of the people who do read the books on those lists
But to the OP, it would seem to me that getting people to read biblical stories requires reminding people of the value these stories have had, and continue to have. I don't think that there's any missional value, really, in having people read the bible. More likely the opposite is to occur, that the stories and ideas conveyed would be too alienating and strange to contemporary people and so would push them away. But those stories are part of our common intellectual heritage now, so I'd think there's value in them that way.
Getting the bible into other cultures? Well I don't know. Again, it seems to me like if the goal is conversion or whatever, then you wouldn't start off with the bible.
You’re newer here, so I’ll mention what everyone else already knows. I came to faith in virtual isolation from Christianity through the gift of a Bible, at a time in my life when I had not enough to read. I read it at night in a locked bathroom to avoid getting mocked. There was nobody to ask questions to. It took me about three years to finish, and somewhere in there (before the Psalms, can’t say exactly when) it went from being a book of fairy stories to me, to being how I got to know the God of Israel—and dear God, how I needed him to survive. I’ve been in the faith ever since, though didn’t get hooked up with a church for several years (basically a covert believer). So claiming that the Bible has no power to reach people falls to the ground—I’m the counter-example. Sorry.
Extra credit for anyone who can figure out if I was a Christian or a Jew (of sorts) during the two years I believed but had not yet reached the New Testament or knew anything about Jesus. I have no idea.
A major issue in England arose from the concept that "the king should live off his own," i.e. customary revenues to which the crown was entitled, that should be sufficient for day to day administration. Should the monarch require extra income he would call a parliament and do a deal with the city and landowners to raise non-customary taxes for a specified period. By Elizabeth I's time the scope of the executive was such that parliaments were being summoned with greater frequency as the capacity to routinely "live off one's own" diminished. The monarchs found this irksome, and the Stuarts sought to raise non-customary taxes without parliamentary permission, which resulted in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century in which parliament largely prevailed, and a constitutional monarchy emerged. In France, by contrast, similar problems resulted in the emergence of absolute monarchy underpinned by "the divine rights of kings" and the emasculation of traditional institutional limitations on monarchical power. (These sorts of issues are discussed in 1 Samuel: 8 ! One might also add the way in which Joseph handled the Egyptian famine to enhance the power of the pharaoh). The later biblical notions of a supreme majesty etc. were almost certainly influenced by kingship as understood by the Babylonians.
@Baptist Trainfan I'm glad you're here as a preacher and @Lamb Chopped as a missionary, because I'm neither. If I were I wouldn't do either very well.
There'd be too much Gamma Gamaliel in there.
I think you are right about the Apostle Paul not citing the Hebrew scriptures when engaging with the Gentiles, Baptist Trainfan. I'm sure he reserved that for debating in synagogues and when he used the lecture hall of Tyrannus. I'm always struck by how courteous he was in debate with the Gentiles (unless I'm missing something). He didn't harangue them if my reading of the NT is correct but sought to find common ground.
Let's not forget that it was the Cross and Resurrection he was proclaiming (deliberate capitals there), which wasn't exactly popular with either Jews (well, most of them) or Greeks.
@Lamb Chopped please forgive me because I'm sure I was one of those who gave you a hard time when you first told us about your Bible in the bathroom experience.
As you'll appreciate, I'm no longer in a 'sola scriptura' tradition but for all that I think my initial reaction was inexcusably harsh. I'm still 'evangelical' in the sense that I do maintain a commitment to the Gospel - but not in the kind of 'pray the sinner's prayer', 'say the magic words' kind of way that @Martin54 alluded to in his street-friend story.
I also believe that the scriptures do have power to reach people. Generally not in isolation, it has to be said, but that doesn't mean I doubt your account. I once met someone who came to faith in Christ through some cultic literature. She became involved with some fringe quasi-Christian group. One day she was reading one of their tracts when a completely out of context quote from the NT 'jumped out' at her and she came to a more orthodox understanding of the Person of Christ.
She was isolated for a while but then went looking for a more mainstream Trinitarian church where she could be be taught the scriptures more accurately. I think she found a Baptist one, I'm not sure, but whatever the case she became a more 'regular' kind of evangelical Christian.
I might get jumped on for that. 'Who are you to say what's pukka and what isn't?' etc etc
If I may return to my Methodist preacher example without muddying the waters still further, his point about the prayers of those old-time guys in Yorkshire chapels was that, 'the Holy Spirit had something to work with.'
He felt that because they'd imbibed so much scripture as well as Bunyan, Milton, Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer etc etc - 'the trumpet, the pipe, the harp, the four-stringed instrument, the psaltery, the symphony and every kind of music' ... there would extra oomph and unction in their prayers.
Of course, he was over-egging his point. God the Holy Spirit can work in anyway he pleases. He doesn't need us to mug up on Bunyan, Milton, Shakespeare ... and Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.
But if we are Christians then whatever type of Christian we are the scriptures are central and whilst not a jumble of proof-texts for us to beat people over the head with, they do - or should - inform the way we act and indeed the way we engage with people around us.
However we cut it, that seems a fairly obvious point to me. Perhaps I'm missing something.
I was a missionary in West Africa for five years (plus learning Portuguese in Lisbon) before I was a Minister. But, partly because my Christian worldview and understanding of Scripture have broadened over the years, and partly because I have far better access to study resources, I'm probably better at contextualising the Bible now than I was 35 years ago (says he, modestly).
Perhaps I can make three points.
1. Christians who take "the plain view of Scripture" can very easily misunderstand it. Scripture was written in a context and culture, we read it in a context and culture. It always has to be "translated" or else we'll get things very wrong. However this ain't easy!
2. Simply "preaching the Bible" as if the words have an inherent power in themselves smells to me of superstition. What's important is the meaning of those words. (In any case, surely words would have to be quoted in their original languages, not KJV English, to have that supposed mystical power?)
3. Terms such as "sin" if used carelessly will be heard by non-biblically-literal listeners in a very different way to that intended by the speaker. We cannot bandy Christian words around and expect them to be understood - just like (say) scientific language, they need to be unpacked and explained.
I don't know about mystical powers. I do know it's never a good idea to underestimate what God can do--or to make his power an excuse for laziness in doing the work of translation, explanation, and general service. I think we probably agree on that?
I don't think that there's any missional value, really, in having people read the bible.
...
Getting the bible into other cultures? Well I don't know. Again, it seems to me like if the goal is conversion or whatever, then you wouldn't start off with the bible.
And note that worldwide networks of bible translation and distribution enterprises exist, more or less, to do these things, as a direct outworking of the Great Commission.
I don't know about mystical powers. I do know it's never a good idea to underestimate what God can do--or to make his power an excuse for laziness in doing the work of translation, explanation, and general service. I think we probably agree on that?
I don't think that there's any missional value, really, in having people read the bible.
...
Getting the bible into other cultures? Well I don't know. Again, it seems to me like if the goal is conversion or whatever, then you wouldn't start off with the bible.
And note that worldwide networks of bible translation and distribution enterprises exist, more or less, to do these things, as a direct outworking of the Great Commission.
Did people fall out of their chairs? Really? My powers are incredible.
I'm quite familiar with these enterprises. They didn't just shove a bible into people's hands and then gallop off into the sunset, though. Distributing the bible was a part of a general missiological framework involving many, many other aspects of evangelism such as support networks, preachers, church planting, etc etc etc.
My point was couched specifically within early 21st century evangelical efforts. I don't think that handing a bible, just a bible, to a disaffected Western youth and saying, 'read this it'll change your life,' is much of a mission statement. I know that LC recounts something like this working for herself, which is nice, but I'm also willing to bet that the pump was primed with various other aspects of the Christian faith. Not the least of which is that we live in an overwhelmingly Christian culture.
Protestants have a real belief in the power of the bible to convert people as though it's some sort of quasi-magical document that if you just properly receive it then you'll know Jesus and be saved. Maybe that's true. I don't see much veracity for that approach in the current state of the West.
No. It was not. You cannot conceive of the isolation from Christianity in which I was raised. This was pre-Internet, too. Shoving a Bible into someone's hands--that's close enough, though in fact I didn't even get that much contact.
As for a Christian culture--
This was California, in the 1970s, in a city which was over 50% Asian and the rest a mix of everything on earth. And when I say "Asian," I mean "born overseas." There was one Christian church in town, as I learned years later. And its leaders had the damndest time getting permission from the city council to build there.
Was I trying to do that? I simply provided a counter-example to the proposition "Nobody could possibly become a Christian through the Bible." That's all.
If you are detecting some anger here, you're right. I don't like having people tell me to my face that I don't know what I'm talking about, when it's my own experience. And I've claimed nothing further.
Was I trying to do that? I simply provided a counter-example to the proposition "Nobody could possibly become a Christian through the Bible." That's all.
If you are detecting some anger here, you're right. I don't like having people tell me to my face that I don't know what I'm talking about, when it's my own experience. And I've claimed nothing further.
I didn't claim nobody could become a Christian through the bible. I never made any blanket statement of the sort. I also didn't tell you to your face that you don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry if anything I said came off that way.
I don't know about mystical powers. I do know it's never a good idea to underestimate what God can do--or to make his power an excuse for laziness in doing the work of translation, explanation, and general service. I think we probably agree on that?
Isn’t any aspect of “what God can do” mystical by definition?
Comments
I can't really imagine many of them thinking it is worrying that nobody else knows the stories. Why would they?
Okay, but you cited as your examples...
Now, with the possible exception of Shskespeare, I don't think the rest of those sources have ever been even an occasional feature of homilies by Roman Catholic or Orthodox clerics.
So are we to assume that the Catholics and the Orthodox are doing it all wrong? Or does their oratory get grandfathered in by virtue of its being traditional on it's own terms?
And if the latter, why can't "Whoa dude, like, re-build the temple in three days", become a tradition unto itself?
Yeah but this was the product of very particular historical circumstances; namely an era of universal education following a period where access to education both secular and religious had been heavily controlled/gate-kept.
Why did they all have those books at home? Because they were often the first people in their family to get access to decent education and hungry to read. Why did they all have those books at home? Because they were the only ones available and it was hard to get hold of anything else.
Even if this period wasn't followed by an explosion of non-literary media, it was unlikely to persist. It is hard to see how it could be replicated, and if you think through the implications of doing so probably not very desirable.
The same is true of the absence of cultural education when languages are taught. It leaves people not understanding a huge part of what native speakers are drawing on when they speak. The awareness of the listener is simply not relevant.
It also seems to me that this is about something other than what was described in the OP, which was: The example from the Methodist circuit rider doesn’t really seem to be about unfamiliarity with “basic biblical or theological allusions.” Rather, it seems to be about declining influence of the language of Shakespeare, Cranmer or the KJV on how English is spoken by contemporary English speakers.
A related thing, maybe, but not the same thing.
And yes @chrisstiles I fully accept the particular cultural and sociological circumstances.
@stetson, I'm Orthodox so I'm hardly likely to argue that the RCs and ourselves have 'got it wrong' by not having lengthy extemporary prayers featuring chunks of the KJV, Milton, Buryan, Shakespeare or the Book of Common Prayer.
I was simply citing an example where the Bible and broader cultural references informed by the scriptures could feature in such prayers.
Heck, if I was going to listen to extemporary prayer I'd rather it had all those things in it than 'Lord we really just ...'
But really and truly, it's not up to me to assess the sincerity or efficacy of other people's prayers. I've got all along saying my own.
@Nick Tamen- I think you are all taking me rather too literally here. I'm not saying that KJV folks aren't going to pray 'Lord we just wanna' prayers any more or less than NIV readers.
Besides, the 'just shall live by faith.'
@KoF - but Sikhs aren't Christians. They are Sikhs. If they were out to convert other people then I'm sure they would be concerned for them to absorb some kind of understanding of the Sikh scriptures even though they wouldn't approach thar in the same way as Christians might.
I'm riffing with these ideas folks and flipping ideas around to see where they land. Don't go all literal on me.
This was certainly the case among the Pentecostals in my native South Wales.
They would also 'prophesy' in language that approximated to the Authorised Version.
'Yea, verily, I say unto thee my son, my daughter, your God hath seen the thoughts and intentions of your heart ...'
And so on and so forth.
I never found any of it convincing. Neither the prophecies nor the tongues.
It may well say more about me than it does about them but it was only when I saw and heard middle-class and educated Anglicans doing it that I took the charismatic thing sufficiently seriously to be drawn that way myself. The restorationist 'house-church' or 'new church' people also prayed and prophesied in ways that sounded more contemporary and less stilted.
Looking back, of course, the content wasn't generally that different but the way it was framed and presented was.
But I digress ...
Although I would contend that this isn't a complete tangent to the OP.
Ok then I'm misunderstanding your thread because you seemed to be complaining about the lack of knowledge of bible stories in society rather than inside your religion.
No, I don't think it's about the language at all - it's about the cultural references. Can you reference "classic literature" - that standard corpus of writing that you can expect an average person to have at least a passing familiarity with - and have it understood by your listener?
It seems to me that these days, "the classics" are much less present. Go and accost random 20-somethings on the high street, and find out how many of them are familiar with the collection of fables attributed to Aesop, or nursery rhymes, or indeed Bible stories.
This is, of course, an opportunity for people to bemoan the state of modern education, but I think once again that education has become different, and not worse.
I suppose you could have a window for widespread familiarity with Biblical tropes in the Anglophone world ranging from 1611 (when the Bible was first widely published in English) to whatever date one wants to arbitrarily draw as the decline of civilization. I'm still not convinced that your average Victorian factory worker would, after an exhausting fourteen hour shift at the factory, set aside some time to read the Bible rather than a Penny Dreadful.
To touch briefly on the subject of kings, I think @Doc Tor is buying into the propaganda of how monarchy should work (at least according to the monarchs) rather than how it actually did work. For example, the monarchs most familiar to the early Christians would have been the Herodians. In other words Roman puppets installed (and sometimes removed) by the Romans. Also, there were numerous revolts against the various Herodians, indicating that they weren't regarded as all-powerful dictators by those they ruled over. The same could be said of the Roman emperors. How many of the early emperors died natural deaths? Only Vespasian and Nerva come to mind as first century examples. (Maybe Titus if you consider disease to be a death by natural causes.)
It gets even dicier if we look at mediæval monarchs. The whole basis of the feudal system was that the king lacked what we today would call "state capacity" to directly administer the kingdom himself and had to rely on semi-autonomous vassals. While there was a lot of contemporary propaganda about the power of the monarch, we don't really get the idea of king-as-unquestioned-dictator until the early modern era at the earliest. That's pretty far down the line, temporally speaking, from both the writing of the Bible and the establishment of the idea of monarchy.
It seems like taking the Gospel message as "Jesus is like Cæsar, only more so" might be exactly the wrong message to learn.
But if we’re talking about someone praying in a style along the lines of “Lord, we really just . . . ,” instead of “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secretes are hid: . . . ,” I think we’re talking more about language as used. That someone prays in the style of the former rather than the latter tells us nothing about whether they having a passing familiarity with the language of Cranmer. They might be very familiar with, it for whatever reason, choose not to emulate it.
Completely agree, and this much more complete expression of what I was trying to get at above. The halcyon age being referred to lasted two generations at the very most (I recall Orwell writing about his conversations with market traders in London who didn't know what happened inside St Paul's), and covered a window where mass education had taken off, but before mass media had made its mark.
My question to @Gamma Gamaliel in the the context of the OP would be 'What does good look like? And how would you see us getting there?'
I'm not sure I have an answer but will attempt one after making the following observations.
1) No, I don't believe there was ever a 'golden age' or a time as Tyndale yearned for when the simplest plough boy knew more of the scriptures than venal cardinals and clerics.
2) It's a great story the one about the chap who visited Byzantium to find ostlers and barbers or the bloke who filled the bath arguing the finer points of 'hypostases' - 'homousios' or whatever it was - and I can't remember the reference off the top of my head. Great story. Probably an urban myth.
3) I am aware of the danger of toppling over into, 'The youth today ...' territory.
4) I still think some of you are taking my Methodist local preacher example far too literally.
5) I suspect that Sikh and Muslim clerics are concerned about levels of scriptural literacy within their own communities when it comes to their own sacred texts.
6) No, I don't think of the UK or any other Western country - or any other country come to that - as a 'Christian country' - but our societies have been informed and shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition and if we look at things from a missiological perspective then that should 'assist' evangelism or the process of evangelisation. If we think such a process is desirable that is.
As to what 'good' would look like, I think a higher level of catechesis across the board - in all churches ' would be a good thing.
There's an old lady in my brother's Anglican parish who thinks that John the Baptist wrote the New Testament.
As far as engaging with wider society goes, then yes, we should try to present things in ways that people understand and not brow-beat them with proof-texts or expect them to know how many tassles their were on the tackle in The Tabernacle.
More importantly, I think the onus is on us - if we are Christians - to think and act 'biblically' - in a 'Beatitude' sense. Our deeds and words should match. Talk is cheap. And I'm the worst offender.
@Lamb Chopped touched on this on the Christian Nationalism thread. The long, slow, tough process of 'presence' - of drawing alongside people and showing 'a more excellent way.'
I signally fail at that.
Until I start to improve at that then I don't have any answers.
But 'good' would be us having a reasonable grasp of the Gospel ourselves and be living it out and applying it in whatever sphere we find ourselves.
I’m afraid I think that @Crœsos, @chrisstiles and others are right—I’m not sure but what the “problem” raised in this thread is grounded more in imagination and nostalgia than in historical reality.
I will get back to you with an attempt at a more coherent answer.
I've tended to post in a stream of consciousness kind of way on this thread and set more hares running than I'd intended.
The central problem posed by the OP is an acute one, I believe.
How do we do 'God-talk' in a post-Christendom, post-Christian context. Which is where we all are or are headed.
The Methodist preacher anecdote was a bit of a red-herring and perhaps I should have discussed it elsewhere.
I think there's more to this issue than Gamaliel has gone from Angry Young Man to Grumpy Old Git and hankers after a romanticised past which never existed in the first place.
I may well be a Grumpy Old Git but let's put that to one side.
I'll try and get the OP back on track tomorrow. Not for the first time I've allowed my loquacity to derail my own thread.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? And yet, in my personal experience, people are much more receptive to the Gospel when they haven't been "immunized" against it by a minor passing acquaintance with a handful of points about Christianity (usually part wrong) and the belief that not owing allegiance to some other religion (Islam?) automatically makes them Christian.
Give me more straightforward pagans, say I. Or anything but the nominal Christians. Because they know not what they are missing, and they damn well don't want you to tell them...
Yes, there have been 'people-movements' among tribal groups, such as in Myanmar and elsewhere. But by and large revivalist movements such as Methodism or the 1859-60 revivals across North America and the UK and the Welsh Revival of 1904-05 all took place in societies with a background knowledge and strong Christian influence.
Indeed, it's often noted that the impact here in the UK of the Billy Graham crusades of the 1950s was higher than that of the 1960s and 1980s. Why? Because there was a stronger residual awareness of the Christian narrative and congregational hymn-singing etc.
Ok, I'm no longer a 'revivalist' and believe there's a lot of wistful wishful thinking about the 'awakenings' and 'revivals' of the past.
I'd also accept that familiarity can breed contempt and that a passing nod to the Gospel and widespread nominalism can and does inoculate people against deeper engagement with the Christian faith.
Granted.
There are issues all ways round.
At the risk of yet more tangents, my own adopted Orthodox tradition here in the UK has a hinterland of largely nominal 'cultural Christians' from Eastern Europe and the Balkans with a few keenies and converts who keep things going.
Most converts come from other Christian backgrounds but I have heard of a number of previously unchurched people who find their way in - either through an interest in iconography or, it seems, the writings and You Tube videos of popular (unfortunately) right-wing philosophers and pundits with Orthodox credentials.
Let the reader understand.
I'm not the only one who worries if people say they want to convert over Dead Horse issues or because they imagine we'll be more conservative than where they've been.
Any road up, as they say in Yorkshire, if we are to reach out to and engage with people who aren't well-versed in biblical concepts, language or narrative how do we present those in a way they can understand?
Forget my Methodist preacher example for a moment. Or my sounding like a Grumpy Old Git wistful for a lost golden-age that never was.
Is the lack of biblical literacy an opportunity? We can present things afresh without baggage as it were.
Or is it an impediment?
Who is this in reply to? And how is does it relate to their comment?
Well, if I've understood the topic and subsequent discussion, it's "What kind of stories are useful for conveying the ideas in the Bible?", not "Is the Bible true?"
And don't get hung up on your familiarity with biblical concepts, language and narrative - just because a particular representation matters to you doesn't mean it should matter to anyone else.
If you want to reach people, you don't start from what you know and are familiar with, you start from where they are. Work out what the problem is to which you're providing a solution, or the question to which you're providing an answer. What aspect of their lived experience is going to be improved by listening to what you have to say?
But you don't have to dismiss the bible stories. Just because people don't recognise the Parable of the Prodigal Son in the same way you do, doesn't mean they won't recognise the archetype. It crops up all over the place in modern culture - music, film, TV. A wayward child's return home, the anticipated reconciliation with the parental home-maker, the reaction of those that never left. And that's without exploring the realm of interpretations - the dreamt-of acceptance of those blamed for being rejected, the embracing nature of fatherhood.
Looking at it from another perspective, what relevance could a story of someone starving and not having enough to eat possibly have today?
Then you have a bigger problem on your hands, because catechesis isn't really something the Anglicans have ever done - middle brow suspicion of actually putting effort into knowing anything is somewhat traditional.
I've spent time in churches which had adult Sunday School prior/post the service so I can see the value of such things. Equally churches like that were once dominant in some places and are no longer, so obviously they have their own issues with transmitting the faith and/or propagating themselves across the ages.
Well, again, the bible is a collection of stories, many of which have proved influential in the literary and intellectual climate of the West in the past, oh say, 2000 years.
Stories and ideas don't just blip out of existence because the structuring conceits, or what have you, are no longer accepted by the majority of the people. I don't think war is a Good and Noble Thing, but I still read the Iliad. Similarly, I don't believe in the parceled out and highly Thomistic vision of the afterlife in Dante's Divine Comedy, but also still read that.
Even if you don't like the bible and the religion(s) it supports, surely the text has value insofar as it has had value for thousands of years.
And even if one DOES think the bible is utterly without value for contemporary readers, I personally think that's a topic for its own thread, not something to just randomly announce on a thread specifically about biblical metaphors.
But enough from me. I'm going to notify the mods about @Martin54's intervention, and they can respond however they want.
The Daflings' school has taught them all bits of Norse mythology, which is an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.
You'd want to add some writing by and about women though, which is tricky because feminist writing is generally in the Schillerian sense sentimental rather than naive.
(Naive and sentimental was a contrast between different poets made by Schiller: naive poets, which included Homer and Shakespeare, write what seems to them interesting without second guessing themselves, while sentimental writers, which for Schiller included most post-medieval poets, write with a meta-awareness and reflecting upon their own emotional reactions to the material.
In this context, naive writing is more open-ended in the uses and interpretations that can be made of it, because the author isn't trying to constrain what other people do with it.)
Sure, and that's an argument for putting it on those lists of 'Great Books of the Western Canon' (the KJV is usually on those lists already, and like the other books on those lists no one reads it).
Besides all of the people who do read the books on those lists
But to the OP, it would seem to me that getting people to read biblical stories requires reminding people of the value these stories have had, and continue to have. I don't think that there's any missional value, really, in having people read the bible. More likely the opposite is to occur, that the stories and ideas conveyed would be too alienating and strange to contemporary people and so would push them away. But those stories are part of our common intellectual heritage now, so I'd think there's value in them that way.
Getting the bible into other cultures? Well I don't know. Again, it seems to me like if the goal is conversion or whatever, then you wouldn't start off with the bible.
Reading Almaghest, Leviathan, Capital and the AV is a minority sport and you can't build a culture around it.
Given that there are already are cultures built around reading those texts and others like them, I presume you mean you can't build a mass culture around the reading of those texts. Well sure. You can't engineer mass culture in general. Christianity isn't a mass culture anymore, we're all post-Christendom baby.
Yeah quite, which is why there is no remedy for the questions in the OP.
@stetson - inform the Admins if you must. I wasn't offended by @Martin54's outburst. It was probably no more than I deserved (although I do think he missed the point).
But that's for Hosts and Admins not for shadow-hosting from anyone else, myself included.
Meanwhile, I agree with much of what @pease and @chrisstiles have written and don't want to give the impression that I'd only be happy if everyone went around citing chapter and verse and recognising every single biblical reference.
Heck, I'm Orthodox. A lot of our folks never open the Bible at all.
I'm simply thinking aloud about the issues - good, bad and indifferent - we face in a post-Christendom / post-Christian society.
Hence my meanderings.
I have an academic interest in Women's History. I'm part of a group which puts a lot of effort into public engagement. We've dressed up in costumes, we've run workshops, we've lead Heritage Walks, we've published booklets, we've given talks, we have a website, we have social media.
Why do we feel we need to convey our ideas to the masses? Because we find it interesting and think that if other people hear about it / read about it, they'll find it interesting too. Because I think the under-representation of women in school curricula and in history books matters and I want to do something about it.
Even in church I feel that my task as preacher is to explain a Bible passage's meaning within its original context, then seek to reconstruct that in a vastly different culture. "The plain meaning of Scripture" can be very misleading if we don't do that!
You’re newer here, so I’ll mention what everyone else already knows. I came to faith in virtual isolation from Christianity through the gift of a Bible, at a time in my life when I had not enough to read. I read it at night in a locked bathroom to avoid getting mocked. There was nobody to ask questions to. It took me about three years to finish, and somewhere in there (before the Psalms, can’t say exactly when) it went from being a book of fairy stories to me, to being how I got to know the God of Israel—and dear God, how I needed him to survive. I’ve been in the faith ever since, though didn’t get hooked up with a church for several years (basically a covert believer). So claiming that the Bible has no power to reach people falls to the ground—I’m the counter-example. Sorry.
Extra credit for anyone who can figure out if I was a Christian or a Jew (of sorts) during the two years I believed but had not yet reached the New Testament or knew anything about Jesus. I have no idea.
A major issue in England arose from the concept that "the king should live off his own," i.e. customary revenues to which the crown was entitled, that should be sufficient for day to day administration. Should the monarch require extra income he would call a parliament and do a deal with the city and landowners to raise non-customary taxes for a specified period. By Elizabeth I's time the scope of the executive was such that parliaments were being summoned with greater frequency as the capacity to routinely "live off one's own" diminished. The monarchs found this irksome, and the Stuarts sought to raise non-customary taxes without parliamentary permission, which resulted in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century in which parliament largely prevailed, and a constitutional monarchy emerged. In France, by contrast, similar problems resulted in the emergence of absolute monarchy underpinned by "the divine rights of kings" and the emasculation of traditional institutional limitations on monarchical power. (These sorts of issues are discussed in 1 Samuel: 8 ! One might also add the way in which Joseph handled the Egyptian famine to enhance the power of the pharaoh). The later biblical notions of a supreme majesty etc. were almost certainly influenced by kingship as understood by the Babylonians.
There'd be too much Gamma Gamaliel in there.
I think you are right about the Apostle Paul not citing the Hebrew scriptures when engaging with the Gentiles, Baptist Trainfan. I'm sure he reserved that for debating in synagogues and when he used the lecture hall of Tyrannus. I'm always struck by how courteous he was in debate with the Gentiles (unless I'm missing something). He didn't harangue them if my reading of the NT is correct but sought to find common ground.
Let's not forget that it was the Cross and Resurrection he was proclaiming (deliberate capitals there), which wasn't exactly popular with either Jews (well, most of them) or Greeks.
@Lamb Chopped please forgive me because I'm sure I was one of those who gave you a hard time when you first told us about your Bible in the bathroom experience.
As you'll appreciate, I'm no longer in a 'sola scriptura' tradition but for all that I think my initial reaction was inexcusably harsh. I'm still 'evangelical' in the sense that I do maintain a commitment to the Gospel - but not in the kind of 'pray the sinner's prayer', 'say the magic words' kind of way that @Martin54 alluded to in his street-friend story.
I also believe that the scriptures do have power to reach people. Generally not in isolation, it has to be said, but that doesn't mean I doubt your account. I once met someone who came to faith in Christ through some cultic literature. She became involved with some fringe quasi-Christian group. One day she was reading one of their tracts when a completely out of context quote from the NT 'jumped out' at her and she came to a more orthodox understanding of the Person of Christ.
She was isolated for a while but then went looking for a more mainstream Trinitarian church where she could be be taught the scriptures more accurately. I think she found a Baptist one, I'm not sure, but whatever the case she became a more 'regular' kind of evangelical Christian.
I might get jumped on for that. 'Who are you to say what's pukka and what isn't?' etc etc
If I may return to my Methodist preacher example without muddying the waters still further, his point about the prayers of those old-time guys in Yorkshire chapels was that, 'the Holy Spirit had something to work with.'
He felt that because they'd imbibed so much scripture as well as Bunyan, Milton, Shakespeare, the Book of Common Prayer etc etc - 'the trumpet, the pipe, the harp, the four-stringed instrument, the psaltery, the symphony and every kind of music'
Of course, he was over-egging his point. God the Holy Spirit can work in anyway he pleases. He doesn't need us to mug up on Bunyan, Milton, Shakespeare ... and Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.
But if we are Christians then whatever type of Christian we are the scriptures are central and whilst not a jumble of proof-texts for us to beat people over the head with, they do - or should - inform the way we act and indeed the way we engage with people around us.
However we cut it, that seems a fairly obvious point to me. Perhaps I'm missing something.
Perhaps I can make three points.
1. Christians who take "the plain view of Scripture" can very easily misunderstand it. Scripture was written in a context and culture, we read it in a context and culture. It always has to be "translated" or else we'll get things very wrong. However this ain't easy!
2. Simply "preaching the Bible" as if the words have an inherent power in themselves smells to me of superstition. What's important is the meaning of those words. (In any case, surely words would have to be quoted in their original languages, not KJV English, to have that supposed mystical power?)
3. Terms such as "sin" if used carelessly will be heard by non-biblically-literal listeners in a very different way to that intended by the speaker. We cannot bandy Christian words around and expect them to be understood - just like (say) scientific language, they need to be unpacked and explained.
And note that worldwide networks of bible translation and distribution enterprises exist, more or less, to do these things, as a direct outworking of the Great Commission.
Yes.
Did people fall out of their chairs? Really? My powers are incredible.
I'm quite familiar with these enterprises. They didn't just shove a bible into people's hands and then gallop off into the sunset, though. Distributing the bible was a part of a general missiological framework involving many, many other aspects of evangelism such as support networks, preachers, church planting, etc etc etc.
My point was couched specifically within early 21st century evangelical efforts. I don't think that handing a bible, just a bible, to a disaffected Western youth and saying, 'read this it'll change your life,' is much of a mission statement. I know that LC recounts something like this working for herself, which is nice, but I'm also willing to bet that the pump was primed with various other aspects of the Christian faith. Not the least of which is that we live in an overwhelmingly Christian culture.
Protestants have a real belief in the power of the bible to convert people as though it's some sort of quasi-magical document that if you just properly receive it then you'll know Jesus and be saved. Maybe that's true. I don't see much veracity for that approach in the current state of the West.
As for a Christian culture--
This was California, in the 1970s, in a city which was over 50% Asian and the rest a mix of everything on earth. And when I say "Asian," I mean "born overseas." There was one Christian church in town, as I learned years later. And its leaders had the damndest time getting permission from the city council to build there.
If you are detecting some anger here, you're right. I don't like having people tell me to my face that I don't know what I'm talking about, when it's my own experience. And I've claimed nothing further.
I didn't claim nobody could become a Christian through the bible. I never made any blanket statement of the sort. I also didn't tell you to your face that you don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry if anything I said came off that way.
Isn’t any aspect of “what God can do” mystical by definition?